# United States v. Thirty-Seven (37) Photographs

> Supreme Court of the United States · June 14, 1971 · 402 U.S. 363

URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9424560

## Case

- **Full name:** United States v. Thirty-Seven (37) Photographs (Luros, Claimant)
- **Court:** Supreme Court of the United States
- **Decided:** June 14, 1971
- **Citations:** 402 U.S. 363; 91 S. Ct. 1400; 28 L. Ed. 2d 822; 1971 U.S. LEXIS 116
- **Precedential status:** Published
- **Opinion:** Concurrence by Stewart
- **Judges:** White, Court'S, Burger, Harlan, Brennan, Stewart, Blackmun, Black, Douglas, Marshall
- **Cited by:** 566 later opinions in the Frix Law Library

## Citator (automated)

- No negative treatment found by the automated citator. That is not the same as a confirmation that the case is good law; read the citing cases.
- Full citator and citing cases: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9424560

## How later opinions describe it (automated extraction)

- finding statute requiring forfeiture of obscene materials to be constitutional by reading into it express time limits for commencement and completion of judicial proceedings that allow it to satisfy Freedman “promptness” requirements
- explaining that customs officials' authority to search luggage is "an old practice and is intimately associated with excluding illegal articles from the country"
- finding that obscenity is not protected speech and Congress may declare it to be contraband and prohibit its importation

## Opinion text

Mr. Justice Stewart,
concurring in the judgment and in Part I of Mr. Justice White’s opinion.
I agree that the First Amendment does not prevent the border seizure of obscene materials sought to be imported for commercial dissemination. For the reasons expressed in Part I of Mr. Justice White’s opinion, I also agree that Freedman v. Maryland, 380 U. S. 51 , requires that there be time limits for the initiation of forfeiture proceedings and for the completion of the judicial determination of obscenity.
*379 But I would not in this case decide, even by way of dicta, that the Government may lawfully seize literary material intended for the purely private use of the importer. 1 The terms of the statute appear to apply to an American tourist who, after exercising his constitutionally protected liberty to travel abroad, 2 returns home with a single book in his luggage, with no intention of selling it or otherwise using it, except to read it. If the Government can constitutionally take the book away from him as he passes through customs, then I do not understand the meaning of Stanley v. Georgia, 394 U. S. 557 .
As Mr. Justice White’s opinion correctly says, even if seizure of material for private use is unconstitutional, the statute can still stand in appropriately narrowed form, and the seizure in this case clearly falls within the valid sweep of such a narrowed statute. Ante, at 375, n. 3.
Aptheker v. Secretary of State, 378 U. S. 500 .

---

Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9424560. Public record. Not legal advice.